


Oberon and Titania

by Chokopoppo



Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Eating Disorders, F/F, Guro, Insanity, Insomnia, Isolation, Parasites, Psychological Horror, Self-Harm, The Haunting - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-08 04:55:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12247431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: It's just you, and me, and this house.Tess has some trouble adjusting to life after escaping House 777. But it's fine. She's fine. She can handle it.





	Oberon and Titania

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, WHO'S READY FOR THE RIDE OF THEIR LIVES
> 
> Goddamn do I love Tess. This is my love-letter to an unappreciated character, which in my brain I know won't exactly revolutionize fandom, but in my heart of hearts I truly believe will change the world. With a lot of blood. Like...a lot of blood. Like a _lot_. 
> 
> ANYWAY, HEED THE TAGS. Love y'all.

In the light of the morning glow, Tess wakes up on the hardwood floor, sweating and shaking but very much alive. Sunlight streams through the window onto her face - when she looks to her left, she sees him.

His head is in one piece, but as far as she knows, she might have dreamed the whole thing up with his head getting kicked in. She’d believe it about this place. Not that it matters - there’s a hole through his skull, just like there was when she first made it back to the ground, and a puddle of blood around him. Forming a black halo in the ruddy goop is his hair, shaken from his baring scalp like pinecones from a burnt forest.

She runs.

~~

The door cracks open just enough that Tess can see half of a woman’s face peering out through the other side. The chain is still connected. She gulps.

“Hello?” The woman says, her eyes darting like a hunted creature, “who are you? What do you want?”

“Are you Devi D.?”

“Maybe.” There’s red paint smeared on her cheek. Or, given their only mutual acquaintance, it could be something more sinister. Tess wonders what exactly she’s doing in there. It’s all she can do not to crane her neck to peer past her. “Who wants to know?”

“My name is Tess,” she says, and bites her lip. She could still wimp out of this, after all. There’s a whole apartment building to run away through. But she’s scared and alone and she doesn’t know what to do. “I, um…I wanted to talk. To someone else who…survived Him.”

That sole green eye widens in shock - recognition - and then the door slams shut in Tess’ face. She stumbles back, almost tripping over the carpeting. There’s no sound inside, but the chain isn’t being pulled back, either. She must be standing by the door, waiting for Tess to go away.

Well, it had been a shot in the dark, anyway. Tess wraps her arms around herself and tries not to get upset - her lunch break is almost over, and she needs to get back to work.

As she turns to go, however, she hears the creak of the door being pulled open again, and she looks back. “Wait,” Devi hisses, “did He follow you? Is He here?”

“How could He?” Tess asks, and shrugs. “He’s dead.”

“What? When? How?” That eyebrow furrows - her eyes squint and focus on the ground. “Did you kill Him? How can you be sure?”

“Two months ago, I escaped. Found him dead in his living room,” she says shortly.

“That’s not possible,” Devi replies, “He called me last week.”

Silence.

“What?” Tess feels the blood leave her body in a rush, her knees shaking underneath her. “He can’t - He what? He can’t have. He’s dead. I _saw_ Him - He, He had a hole in His _head_. I watched someone kick His _skull_ in.” 

“Be that as it may,” Devi says, “He called me last week. Dead or not, He still has my number.” 

“Oh my god,” she mumbles, and fumbles desperately for the weight of the ankh hanging around her neck, a motion learned in childhood and bastardized by her atheism. “What do - He’s alive? What do we do?”

“There’s no ‘we’ about it,” Devi says, “I have something good going here. I have a job. He hasn’t tried to kill me again. Yet. And I don’t need Him to remember I’m here because some blabbermouth kid leads Him right to me.” Green eyes squint at her through the crack. “I can’t help you, Tess,” she says, “but I can tell you to run. Smartest thing to do - just get out on the road and don’t look back.”

“If it’s so smart, why haven’t you done it yet?”

“I’ve been organizing things. Getting my affairs in order,” she says, “come Saturday, I’ll be gone, and no one here will have ever heard of me. Least of all you.”

The door slams shut, and this time there is a rustle of moving feet. The scrape of a chair being dragged, then a soft string of curses. Then silence.

~~

The Moose chose her.

It sounds stupid, she knows. Even calling it The Moose concedes to that dumbass Krik’s idea of a herd of real animals living in Johnny’s wall, instead of that…thing. But she doesn’t have a clever name for it. Nobody does, not even the man who fed it.

But that’s beside the point. When they were running from The Moose, she only heard it moving around once that bastard got free. It started at the very bottom of the basement and followed her all the way to the house, where Krik had killed Johnny and The Moose had killed Krik.

And then it had simply disappeared back down the stairs, leaving her to watch the world dissipate around her until there was nothing left but debris, floating in the void. When the world snapped back into focus, she had lived, and the monsters in the basement had not. It had spared her. It _chose_ her to live. 

When she thinks about it, she realizes that every life she ever saw The Moose take was a life she had already considered with contempt and disgust. The room full of people, tied and screaming and furious at her, had been washed away in a tidal wave of blood. Dillion had been ripped from the wall next to her, leaving her unsullied - with just enough time to escape. It didn’t _have_ to pick them off one by one. A thing with that many heads and that many mouths could easily have killed her and Krik at the same time, and just made a clean job of it.

Maybe it left her with Krik to show her - to teach her - why Johnny had done what he had done in the first place. After all, hadn’t she _almost_ agreed with it? Hadn’t it felt _good_ to watch Dillion’s body break apart, to hear the agonized screaming of all those who had mocked and derided her?

Well, it won’t work. She’s stronger than that little shit. If that thing tries to choose her, tries to grow itself inside her head, she’ll be ready for it. She’ll have to be.

~~

She has to admit, Devi’s advice - though infuriating at the time - is actually pretty good. Tess reads newspapers, even though she tells her shitty friends that she thinks the news is overrated. No other cities in this area are struggling with mass killings, and the further from this dumbass town she gets, the less panic there seems to be.

The choice of Wisconsin is almost at random - she used to have family who lived there, and she read a book once about a fugitive who hid out there away from the authorities. Maybe she’ll write a book one day. _‘How Tess Reed Survived The Two Biggest Assholes In Santa Barbara Fighting For Her Love: A Biography’._ Ha, ha. Based loosely on a true story. Very, very loosely.

It probably could have been perfect, too - the ultimate escape - if Devi hadn’t fucking stalked her there. Like a - like a _stalker,_ or something. Whatever.

(This is why she doesn’t write books. Not that she _couldn’t,_ if she really put her mind to it - everyone says they’re a writer, don’t they? Everyone’s writing something. If Tess could write anything, she’d write books for airport bookstores to sell - a step above garbage, a million steps below literature.)

Tess is just trying to fill a cart up with dry groceries that can last her at least two weeks when she sees her again. She almost drops her bag of dried yellow split peas, tries to reason her way out of it - but then, who else dyes their hair that specific, weird-ass neon purple? Members of punk rock indie bands that no one has ever heard of except the typical clientele in tiny underground goth dance clubs, who don’t even like the music but like saying their favorite band is ‘oh, nothing _you’ve_ ever heard of,’ that’s who.

“Devi? Devi D?” Tess says, and hurries over as the other woman turns to face her, lips hanging open in surprise. “Well, of all the people I thought I’d never see again - how are you?”

Devi opens her mouth purposefully, then closes it again. Her face rapidly shifts through a number of emotions, most of which Tess can’t claim to identify, before settling on something between shock and irritation. “What the hell,” she says flatly, “did you _follow_ me here?”

“What?” It’s Tess’ turn to feel a lot of different feelings, most of them negative. “How was I supposed to know you were moving out here? I’ve been living here for like a month. _You’re_ the one who followed _me_.”

Black lips curl around white teeth. “Shit,” Devi says, “a month, huh? Fuck.” She’s quiet for a minute. “Well, I know staked out territory when I see it,” she admits, “look, I’ve already paid for a month of rent on an apartment in town in advance, but after that, I promise to beat it. Alright? You moved faster than me. Fuck, and I was planning this in advance. Fucking art firm. Shit. Why Wisconsin?”

“I used to have family up here.” Tess looks down into her grocery cart self-consciously. She can’t help but feel kind of bad for getting here first. “Look, you don’t have to - “

“I just moved up here ‘cause there’s a book I read a long time ago set in this town. Pretty much random. I’m barely settling in - just buying a bunch of cheap shit so I can pretend humanity doesn’t exist for a little while. At least until my electricity gets turned back on.”

Tess looks into Devi’s cart. It’s mostly empty - there’s nothing in it that’s more than two or three dollars. The woman looks like she’s planning on living off ramen for the next decade. She’s doing a lot of mental calculation in her head, and no matter how she shifts the variables, there’s no way out without making an ass of herself.

Oh well. No time like the present.

“You could…you could come over, if you’d like,” Tess says nervously, holding a box of cereal to her chest like a fiber-enriched shield against the world, “if you’re just getting settled in - I’ve been here for a few weeks, um - I could make dinner if you can’t - I mean, I would feel bad leaving you to live off of ramen and chips.”

Devi narrows her eyes, looks Tess up and down like she’s trying to read her mind via bad fashion choices. She’s silent for so long that Tess almost starts talking again. “I don’t want to talk about Him,” she says coolly - but her voice halts, shudders. “Just - just normal stuff. Whatever you do for work, and…whatever.”

Unthinkingly, Tess blurts out “I’m a writer,” then desperately wishes she hadn’t. Devi’s eyes flutter, squint, and settle as she smiles.

“Save it for dinner,” she says, but she smiles - and, without thinking about it, Tess smiles back. “But hey, I guess we artistic types have to stick together, huh?”

~~

“You’re so pale.”

“Yeah, well. That’s what I get for being a fucking hermit.”

Tess lights a cigarette and watches Devi tie her hair back. There’s streaks of lipstick along her neck that descend along the flat plane of her sternum, and Tess - glancing at the red stain on her own finger - feels a strange surge of ownership. “I like it,” she says. “I know girls who would kill to be that pale. A couple months ago, _I_ would’ve killed to get that pale. I mean, I didn’t do that vampire whiteface thing, but I used to - “ she breaks off, feeling naked and embarrassed. She thumbs the underwire of her bra self-consciously.

Devi glances up to meet her eyes, and her brows furrow for a moment. “Did you - “ she starts to ask, then shakes her head. “No, never mind. It’s not important.”

“Um.” Warm arms reach around her and stroke up and down her back. It’s hard to focus. “You want a smoke?”

“No thanks. Well, maybe later. When I’m done.” Something warm and wet laves against her neck. Tess groans, and teeth sink into her skin.

She dives, desperately, into that dark lipstick, into wet teeth and hot flesh and gasping, gagging, screaming - she sucks ash into her lungs and prays, and carves hips into her like she’s sculpting the patron saint of friction and wet desire.

And she breathes that pale skin in long after the lights go out, and she smokes around a smile as the woman next to her makes a warm noise and rolls over in bed.

~~

The locks on her door are firm. She’s checked them herself - put on a pair of her sturdiest hiking boots and kicked at the wood until the frame splintered internally and her foot felt broken. It’s safe here.

He gets in anyway. He’s sitting at the table in her dining room.

“Get the fuck out,” she tells Him, brandishing a meat cleaver. She isn’t frightened of Him, she realizes. Just angry.

“Nice thing you’ve done with my place,” He says, as though He can’t hear her. “Did you renovate it to impress her? I did, too. It almost worked, you know. I was so close.”

“She told me. But this isn’t your place, Nny, it’s mine. And I’m telling you to get the fuck out.”

He stares at her, confused - then scowls. “Don’t act stupid,” He says bitterly, “you were always my favorite, on account of that brain. Don’t fucking blow it now.”

“Idiot, we’re in Wisconsin. Far away from your shitty basement and your Moose and whatever the fuck else you kept down there. I left first. Devi followed me. She wants me.”

“She’s not real.”

“Fuck you!” She screams, and brings the cleaver down into the weak wooden counter with a _’thwack’_. In her ears, she feels the static of a broken TV crawling towards her brain. “You fucking psychopath! You’re dead! You’re the one who’s not real!”

“I’m the only one who _is_ real, Tess!” He hisses, and fingers like talons sink into His own flesh as He claws at his face. “Wake up and drink the fucking sunshine, you self-styled imbecile! The world is _over._ You saw it fall apart around us - you saw that shithead Krik go over the edge into the abyss! You saw it and you couldn’t handle it, so you built the world back up like it would change anything. Well, it won’t. Because - “

“Shut up!” Blood drips out of her nose and her ears, streaming from every orifice like her brain is trying to shatter her skull with centrifugal pressure. It clots in front of her eyes and wets her lips. “Shut up!”

“ - There’s nothing but you, and me, and this house!” He shrieks, standing, and Tess rears back and buries the cleaver in his shoulder. He screams, skywards, until the noise is silenced by the swarm of maggots crawling their way up His gullet and out of His mouth. He chokes and gurgles, stumbling back and forth.

“This is my world,” she growls, spitting as the blood impedes her tongue, her teeth shaking loose from her jaw and dribbling out like a salivating infant, “I built it! And I don’t want to be alone anymore. So what if it isn’t real? Let me pretend!”

A soft chime sounds somewhere far away.

The white mass of larvae is gone. His mouth is empty. “You don’t have to,” He says, and there is no blood gushing down His shirt, and His eyes are calm. “I’m real, Tess. So are you. It’s okay.” And He holds out His hand.

She never noticed it when she was down in His personal hell, but His voice is soft. His cheekbones are long, and His eyes are dark and intelligent. She touches His hand.

“Devi,” she manages, her mouth jumbled and confused and full of tongue and teeth.

“She isn’t real,” He says softly, His fingers brushing the back of her hand, “I’m real, Tess - she isn’t. She won’t ever know.”

She presses her forehead against His. Feels Him, solid and warm, against her skin.

~~

Sometimes, in her dreams, she sees Dillion being torn to pieces. It feels good. Borderline arousing. She watches it again and again, an ocean of all the shit he was full of bursting out through the dam, drowning her as she laughs and laughs until it pours down her throat into her lungs.

When she lies awake, head swimming with his screams, she laughs and laughs and scrapes sharp nails over the bumps of her ribs.

When she sleeps, she sleeps alone.

~~

The Johnny who appears in her kitchen isn’t real. Tess knows that - at least, she believes it, because if she doesn’t, she’ll go insane. But He’s real when He’s there - when He touches her, He has to be. She believes that, too. Her mind walks a thin line between the sands on either side of sanity.

It all goes away, though, when she feels the weight of her wrench in her hands. There’s a man in front of her in the line for the ticket stand. She’s already irritable - it’s a humid evening, air still wet with last night’s rain, and sweat is beading across her skin under her long black coat. This son of a bitch makes it worse.

He’s with his girlfriend. They’re arguing loudly. Tess gives up on staring resolutely at the illuminated ticket prices board and instead glares daggers at the couple in front of her, but they pay her no mind. Snidely, the man tells his girlfriend that someone probably pissed in her mother. The milling crowd looks away, uncomfortably, as the girl begins to cry.

“Hey,” Tess snaps, “can you shut the fuck up, please? It’s my day off. I’m not getting paid to listen to this shit.”

“Mind your own fucking business, Morticia,” he snaps, and his girlfriend sniffs and giggles in that learned defense - desperate to shift the attention off herself and onto someone, _anyone_ else. Laughing at his jokes to protect herself from his ire. 

Tess recognizes that laugh. She used it often enough, herself. When she looks into his face, she sees Dillion staring back at her.

The wrench hits him heavily, and she feels his nose crunch under her power, knocking him backwards. he throws his arms up to protect himself, but as she swings down again, the bone of his arm crunches under five pounds of solid iron. As he falls to the ground, gasping, crying, she throws her knee into his stomach and holds the wrench above her head, brings it down on his skull with both hands.

His scream stops as his skull shatters - the girl’s goes on and on. Tess finds herself laughing as she brings the wrench down again and again with a strength she has not earned, as her face is spattered with blood and gray matter and bone fragments, tearing apart at seams and sinews, as she strikes at him again, pounding and pounding andpoundingand

She’s standing in line, wrench in her purse. There’s no carcass in front of her. The man and his girlfriend are gone.

Between her fingers, she feels a shard of bone.

The movie ticket is seven dollars - black and white films rarely draw a large crowd, here, though The Haunting is a classic of modern cinema. She sits, alone, in the empty movie theater, half expecting the police to appear and arrest her. Instead, for two hours, her fingers wear down on the piece of the man’s skull as Eleanor goes mad from isolation.

She tries not to wonder if she willed that man out of existence. There’s a lot she tries not to think about, these days.

 

Devi shows up at her front door two days later. Tess eyes her with distrust. The chain remains in place as she peers through the crack.

“Tess?” Devi says, her voice thick with concern, “I haven’t seen you in a week. What’s up? Where have you been?”

She glances up and down the hallway. “You aren’t real,” she says nervously, uncertain, “how do I know you’re real?”

“What?” Devi looks hurt. “Tess, what are you talking about? Of course I’m real.”

“How do you know? How do I know?”

Before she can answer, the door slams shut in Devi’s face. She stays outside for several minutes, trying to yell through the door, but Tess can’t understand what she’s saying. All she can hear is the sound of rushing water, and she lies on her back in her bed.

~~

Click.

“Hello?”

“Devi? It’s Tess.”

“Tess? Why didn’t you - “

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have - I behaved badly. I wanted to apologize to you for the way I acted.”

“Tess, I - it’s fine. I’m not mad. I was just worried. Are you okay?”

“I - I’m not hurt. But I’m…Devi, I think I’m sick. Something’s wrong with me.”

“What do you mean? I’m coming over.”

“You can’t. You have to stay away from me. I think…I think it’s the same thing _He_ had.”

“The sickness? Tess, I had it too. You can fight it. I can show you how - “

“Devi, I killed someone.”

Silence.

“I hit him with a wrench. I didn’t mean to - it was like I wasn’t in control of my body. I can’t hurt you too. And if you came near me…I can’t control it, Devi. You have to stay away. I can’t let it hurt you again.”

“Tess, wait - “

She hangs up.

The phone rings again a few minutes later, but Tess is no longer in the apartment to answer it. She is driving, as far away as it takes to shake the sight of black lipstick and white teeth.

~~

“You can’t protect her, you know,” Nny says, siting on Tess’ hotel bed, “not from yourself. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Shut up.”

He shrugs. “My silence won’t change the truth,” He says, almost carelessly, “as long as you know where she is, she won’t be safe.”

“She’s smart,” Tess says, scowling and checking the locks on her door again, “she’ll leave. I gave her a pretty tough warning, you know. Over the phone. She’ll run.”

“She didn’t run from me,” He points out, “she stuck around for _months_ after I tried to kill her. Let’s be honest, who would she be more scared of? A man with a literal torture chamber basement and a portfolio of new and inventive ways to use disposable chopsticks, or some dumb kid with half a lead pipe and a shaky voice?”

Tess narrows her eyes. “Nny doesn’t talk like that,” she says, and stabs the figment in the chest with a pocketknife. He screams, briefly, then explodes outward in a burst of white moths and swarms out the window into the night.

She watches them go, then lies down on the bed herself. Sleep eludes her these days, and she fights it when it approaches. If she didn’t dream, she wouldn’t mind it, but dreams fill her head and confuse her, leaving false memories like a path of slime. But she can’t drive properly without it, and she won’t be like him. Won’t kill indiscriminately. If she was the only one a crash would kill - 

A cool, slender hand touches Tess’ forehead. “You’re burning up,” says Devi, Her fingers stroking along her temples. “Why are you running from me?”

“I can’t hurt you,” Tess whispers, and lets her eyes flutter shut, “you deserve better. Someone who can love you normally.”

“Don’t go, Tess,” She says, “I need you.”

“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Cool lips press against her neck. Tess drifts.

~~

Click.

“I woke up with your lipstick on my neck.”

“Tess? Tess, come home.”

“He’s chasing me, Devi. I know Him - He won’t stop until He has me. But I won’t give up. I’ll draw Him out. I’ll kill Him - the real Him. If He dies, the sickness will too. It has to. It _has_ to.”

“You can’t do this to me. Fuck, you can’t do this to _yourself._ Where are you? I’m going to come get you.”

“It doesn’t matter - I don’t know - it doesn’t matter. 777, Devi, you have to - you have to run, you - “

Click.

~~

She kills a man in an alleyway and hacks his jaw off with a meat cleaver, and the fog clears.

Only for a moment, of course. Any more than that would be impossible - absurd. But as his screams break off into gurgles and the blood runs down her hands, staining her black gloves, His voice shuts the fuck up. There’s no music, no laughter, no whispers on the edges of reality. Just skin tearing and the soft drip of rain in the puddle of blood, clear as a bell.

She leaves the body there, but takes the jaw with her as a souvenir. A reminder. It’s real, it has to be, even if no one looks twice at her blood-darkened clothes, her hunted, frightened eyes. She wraps it in a towel and buries it among the trash in her car.

When she gets onto the freeway, she lets Nny pick out the music. He smiles at her from the passenger seat almost shyly. “I thought we could listen to something different for a change,” He says, “I like to expand my horizons. Do you like it?”

She laughs. “Country? I hear an acoustic guitar. Very retro.”

“It’s _folk,_ ” He insists, “big difference. Country’s devolved into pandering, beer-chugging and tractor-tailpipe-fucking garbage without respect for its working class roots. Folk, on the other hand, can’t change with the times - it’s historical, see, old songs that have survived hundreds of years of hard labor. It’s the sound of humanity.”

Tess listens for a while. “Interesting,” she says after a moment, “but I don’t think I like it.”

“Oh, I don’t, either,” Nny says, and laughs - a small, twinkling sound, like fireflies in a jar, “I just wanted to see how you would react.”

It’s in moments that she can’t remember how she ever hated Him - how she claimed to hate Him just last night. She goes days, sometimes, without the thought of Him filling her esophagus with bile, sure - but this is something different. Something crystalized and foggy like the thick seep of amber around a long-dead mosquito. The light on her windshield reflects and blinds her, but she closes her eyes and dips into the evening.

Next to her, Johnny laughs and hums along to the music on the radio. His voice is surprisingly low, rumbling through her blood, vibrating inside her bones. She blinks sluggishly inside the darkness of her closed eyes. Anxiously, her tongue runs over her lips.

~~

Those black and dripping nightmares return to her, red-hot and soaked in bile. She curls up on the generic tiling of the hotel bathroom and waits for the next surge.

Her legs ache with the exhaustion of running, climbing stairs and ladders in a fast-paced retreat towards the surface. Above her, the voices of the confused and agonized - below, screaming and silence. And at her side, trying to scramble out of Hell like her own personal Vergil, a dumbass who can’t shut his fucking mouth. 

In retrospect, Krik had complained an awful lot about how long he’d been down there for a man with a freshly shaved head. Tess has the feeling that Nny wasn’t running some kind of cut-price barbershop down there. Fuck, he probably hadn’t even been down there for as long as she had.

Then again, the time all ran together in the darkness. Waiting in the dark, counting cockroaches and almost praying for footsteps on the stairs -

With a heave, she vomits in her mouth, and scrambles upright to spit it in the toilet before the next squeeze in her stomach wrings her dry. She can’t remember eating. Not today, not yesterday. The vomit comes every night, just the same. 

Blood comes up. She coughs and swears.

~~

It’s not her fault Krik is dead. It’s not her fault it’s not. She didn’t do it and anyway he deserved it if she did but she didn’t. It’s not her fault.

The Moose isn’t hers. It isn’t her. It spared her but not because she made it, it chose her for a reason, it chose her it chose

~~

Goddamn, cherry freezies are good. Tess sits outside the convenience store on the curb, making that weird sucky noise with her straw and watching the cars go by.

It’s a warm night, but she doesn’t like wearing short sleeves anymore. The idea of anyone seeing her bare skin except her two fairies is nothing short of repulsive. She’s not a fucking object, she’s not a thing for people to see, she’s a fully realized human person. Her heart jackhammers away in her chest.

“How is it?” Tess glances to her left and sees Devi sitting on the curb beside her. 

It’s good.

“I always liked the blue flavor better.”

That’s because you have no taste, Tess reminds her, and laughs. Devi smiles.

“Guess so,” she says, and tucks a curl of purple hair over her ear. She’s so beautiful in profile, refined and elegant like the Queen of Winter. “I miss you, you know. I miss having your hands on me.”

I know, Tess says. I’m lonely, too. But I’m close.

“It’s been months. It was April when you left.”

It’s April now. It’s warm. Anyway, Tess says, and narrows her eyes, I left in the summer. I remember because I killed that man in August because it was so so hot out, it was so hot, I couldn’t stop sweating.

“It’s not April, Tess, it’s not, please don’t do this, I can’t lose you - “

Devi wouldn’t say that, Tess says, she wouldn’t even think that, she doesn’t need me - you’re not her, you’re not, bring her back. Give her back to me before I slaughter you like a fucking chicken like a fucking farm animal, I’ll break your neck give her _back to me_

“No, please, Tess, please, it’s me - “

She puts her head between her knees and screams

~~

“Is she real?”

Johnny sighs and shifts in bed. “You know she’s not,” He says, “you know it’s just us and this house.”

“That’s not true. Stop lying to me.”

He is quiet for a moment, staring up at the ceiling fan rotating above them. Without a bulky coat around Him, He seems even smaller than He ever did in the basement. His skinny chest rises and falls, wheezing ever so softly into that cavernous silence that always waits between them. “I can’t tell you what’s true or not,” He says, “I’m sorry, Tess. You’re losing your mind. When I talk to you, you don’t listen to me.”

“I _can’t_ believe it,” she says, “I need her to be real. You know that. I need her, I need, I need someone to, I need her to love me.”

“And that someone can’t be me.” 

“That’s not - it has to be her. I love her.”

“Do you?” Those dark eyes flash, huge and sunken and suddenly black, rolling like wet marbles. “Because you think she needs you? Or is it…carnal? Is that why you can’t - “ with a choke, He cuts Himself off, clasping His arms in skeletal hands.

He is so small, she thinks. And so pathetic. So completely a thing under her control. Maybe he isn’t Him, maybe he _is_ something she built for herself in this fucking new universe, broken and rebuilt around her.

“I’m your god,” she says after a moment, and he freezes - and she sees him for what he really is. A desperate cockroach, hungry for her approval. “I am, aren’t I?”

“This is your world,” he says, shaking. “You built it. You chose me. You let me live again.”

“And you want me to love you,” She says, “you need to be important to me. So you can keep existing. Right?”

“Not quite,” he says, and She smiles as he squirms. “I exist only for you. Without you, existence would hold no purpose, no end, no line. I lived like that for so long before I met you, you know, lived without anything to live for. I would rather die, I would die for it. Just to experience beauty, just to be seen by you.”

The way he trembles burns hot in Her back, dark eyes fluttering with deference. “Show me your bones,” She says after a moment, “let me carve my name into you.”

And he weeps, worships Her as She takes his bones apart and unmakes him, peels the skin away from his flesh and drives his blade all the way through his gut to the wall, opens him up and uncoils his innards. And he begs Her for it, tears streaming down his face.

 

 

 

_If we shadows have offended,_  
_Think but this, and all is mended -_  
_That you have but slumber’d here_  
_While these visions_

 

it chose her for a reason she didnt kill him it isnt her fault

it felt so good to watch them die

 

 

 

what day is it what day is it what fucking day is it

 

It’s still so hot. It shouldn’t be - the white snow crunches under her feet, but her skin is red-hot and sweating. Strange, that - she thought for sure she would be cold. She remembers being cold once. 

She lies down and buries her face in the snow. It’s so hot. She can’t get any relief. The sweat beads on her back.

Stupid, stupid, she’s so stupid, they’re parasites. She knew what - she knew - she _saw_ them. She saw Johnny’s parasites in that fucking house, the real Johnny, saw those styrofoam monsters laughing or screaming in equal parts, one begging for and one running from death. A sickness that crawled in his ear one day and nested in his brain.

It’s inside her. It got in. She _let_ it in - she saw that black basement rotting and stinking with bile and shit and blood, and she spread herself open and swallowed it whole. When He blew that hole in His brain, was it hunting for a new host? Did she prostrate herself before it and cry out for its touch?

It’s so hot.

~~

The silence of the abyss suffocates and cottons her. She floats in empty space, no stars above and no earth below.

The debris of 777 floats around her, chunks of wooden flooring or plaster. A drop of blood, pitch black, collides gently with her face as it drifts past. It stains her skin just under the eye.

It’s His blood. The real Him.

Long, black hair floats around her face, and Tess reaches up to find it growing out of her own head. Strange - she could have sworn she shaved it only a week ago, but it feels like it did when she was a child. Her mother never let her cut it - not such beautiful dark hair, hair she had always despised.

It’s just you, and me, and this house. She stares down at her skin, starched out and paper-white. Under her gaze, her fingers stretch and elongate, her whole body twisting and pointing at sharp, ugly angles. She ought to scream. Ought to be afraid.

Mother wouldn’t let her cut her hair

there is screaming from down below but the basement is gone maybe it is krik still screaming still falling over the edge over the stars she didnt kill him it wasnt her fallt she wnated it but she didnt do it she idnt tsnot her fallt it chose her it chose he sayd she wa s a gd he beged for forgivnes the screaming is scrmng is still scrng and her body and she

the ankh

before her rising up and glittering gold in an ink-stained blackness her ankh hangs from its chain STOP without thinking she wraps her fingers around the stem STOP the gold burns to the touch but she grips it harder STOP in agony she can live again STOP

she is a god STOP he told her she was his god STOP

she extends her arm

~~

One morning, she wakes up and finds a man dead in her room. His blood is all over the walls. She doesn’t know who he is. She doesn’t really care.

Wishes whoever killed him would fess up to it, though. Save her a lot of time.

~~

In her dreams, she sees her fairies curled together, pale and thin and smelling faintly of clove cigarettes. It doesn’t get her as hot and bothered as the dreams where Dillion goes to a million pieces, ha, ha, but it’s nice to have four hands at her disposal. They could never meet in the meatspace, ha, ha, bad past, polluted water. She can’t keep both of them or they’d just kill each other and then where would she be? Waiting for their heads to regrow, ha, ha.

She wakes up and lights a cigarette and tries to fuck herself anyway, though. Too bad neither of them ever have the manners to help her out these days, have to do everything herself. Shoved her thumbs into Nny’s eye sockets the other day and p u l l e d until his cranium started to crack and barely got a thank you for it. Then again, he was practically beside himself but still it is _just_ common courtesy. She was cleaning gray matter off her hands for hours. Hours. They wouldn’t get clean. And he didn’t even thank her for it.

 

 

It’s so hot it’s so hot it’s so hot what fucking day is it

 

 

maybe if she gets all this off of her it would be less hot. she strips away her coat and gloves and it’s still so hot, strips away her clothes and her dignity and it’s still so hot. she stands naked and touches her collarbone where her skin bumps up over  
if she could just get it off she wouldn’t be so hot if she could just if she can just get it off get it off  
she grabs at her skin and scratches and pulls but it just wont come off it wont so she rips at her arms and her ribs and its stuck on but she pulls and pulls  
nails tear at bones and stomach and arms but nothing pulls away and everything is wet and humid and so hot so hot she cant get it to stp

 

 

 

 

She found the souvenir she kept in the car all wrapped up in cloth, but when she unwrapped it there was nothing inside except red stains on her hands and her missing pair of broken glasses.

She thinks she’s losing her mind.

 

 

SHE LEFT THOSE GLASSES IN THAT FUCKING HOUSE

 

 

Click.

“Devi, it’s me, I need to hear your voice.”

“Tess? Tess, you - Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind - wo bist du gewesen - “

“What? I can’t understand - “

“Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif _Tesspleasewhatshappening_ wo bist du - “

“Devi don’t go, don’t go, Devi god, don’t go, I can’t understand - “

_”Tess, it’s here. It’s here in the house with me - “_

Click.

~~

The bleeding won’t stop it won’t stop, where did all these scars come from

 

 

_You have to find a host._

“What?”

Devi stands in front of her in that black abyss, debris drifting around her. _You have to find a host, Tess,_ she repeats patiently, _something physical for Johnny and I to inhabit._

“I don’t understand. A host? Like the…like the styrofoam - “

_Sort of,_ Devi says, and sighs. _Look, it’s getting pretty crowded in your head. Most people find a host first, before their heads fill up so much. It’s going to make you crazy._

_Look,_ she says again, when she realizes Tess isn’t going to reply, _it’s easy. Okay? Just find a doll or a - a painting or something. Mine was a painting, I told you that. It’s better if you make it yourself, or change it so it’s your own. Then I’ll be there and you won’t need me in your head all the time._

Tess stares distantly towards the floorboards clogged with dark blood, floating through space. “I don’t want you to go,” she says, “I want you near me.”

_I didn’t ask what_ you _wanted,_ Devi snaps, and her voice is suddenly frozen and harsh. Tess blinks and tries to stumble back, but there’s nothing under her feet. _I told you! I need a host! You can’t keep me trapped in here forever!_

Her body contorts in brutal, screaming angles, and Tess tries to cry out as claws reach for her arms, dig into her flesh - but no sound comes. The Thing That Was Devi bares sharp teeth and wild, multiplying eyes.

_Let me out - you BITCH, LET ME OUT -_

And Tess screams and screams, and grabs hold of whatever she can, and feels those long claws punch through her to the other side. “You can’t make me do anything,” she hisses through gritted teeth, blood pouring out of her mouth in streams, “you’re mine, Devi, you’re mine, you’re mine! You can’t get free - I’m your god, and you’re just my puppet!”

_YOU BITCH YOU BITCH YOU BITCH maybe I am for now but just you wait, Tess, just you fucking wait, I’ll get free from you and I’ll tear your skin off and NAIL IT TO MY FUCKING DOOR, LET ME OUT LET ME OUT_

“I wish you fucking would,” she spits. “You worthless piece of garbage.”

 

h el p he lp h elp help its hot its hot its hot

 

_THIS IS MY BODY TOO, STOP IT STOP IT LET ME OUT_

~~

The highway is deep and black and endless, and Tess dives into it, barreling on at a hundred and nine an hour. She hasn’t worn a seatbelt in daysweeksyearscantremember. The world can’t kill her. She’s stronger than it is, and if she couldn’t manage it, nothing else could.

The other day she hit herself with a taser straight to the brain, on its highest setting. Factory-made, illegal in the United States. Strong enough to kill a humpback whale. Slammed it right into her head and she didn’t die. Something’s keeping her alive - one of her fairies, she’d bet anything - until it’s _time_ for her to die. Until they’ve fed on her long enough.

That’s what those fucking dolls in the basement said, isn’t it? Said they were feeding on Johnny, weakening him, until they got what they wanted. The Thing That Was Devi won’t kill her. It’s still evolving, still preying on her. It’s feeding. It has to be. It _has_ to be.

But she can’t die until she gives it a host. That’s what it wants.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he says, and she looks at him, curled like a caged bird in the seat beside her. His body is bare, a mass of dark skin stretched over protruding bone, luminescent in the backlit darkness. He doesn’t look at her, but she can see his eyes in the darkness in front of her, black on black on black, sunken. Those pupils are pure paper-white, and so distant, so far away, over the hills and deep in the darkness.

Tess can feel tears staining her face.

“You were right,” she says, “you were right. It’s just you, and me, and this house. I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” he says, and his voice is so soft. A cool hand on her fevered skin. “You always were my favorite, on account of that brain. I told you that. This thing…it devoured me. It devoured her. You’re fighting it - you saw it coming, and you’re fighting it.”

She stares at the distant horizon. Dawn is breaking. “Are you here to kill me?”

“No,” he says, “I’m not like her. She wants to get out - she wants to get loose.”

“And you?”

Somewhere far away, a wave strikes the shore. “I like it here,” he says. “I love your dreams. No one has ever dreamed beauty for me.”

“I hate you,” she says.

“You think so,” he says, “but you’re too weak to even make me ugly.”

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” she says.

But she cannot believe it.

She cannot remember it being true.

~~

“Hey, I really like your eyeliner,” the cashier says, pulling a pack of Djarum Blacks off the shelf behind her. “That color. It really works for you. Where’d you get it?”

“It’s human blood,” Tess says. “From my enemies.”

“Sure. How are you paying?”

“Oh - cash.” She places a ten and a five on the counter. “I like your hair.”

“Thanks. It’s genetic.”

“You’re very beautiful.”

The girl looks up, and for a moment, the glassy facade of retail work shatters around her. Those eyes are deep brown and dewy, nothing like the vibrant green that haunts her - but that hair - a thick braid of shocking purple - 

“Oh - thank you - um - here, here’s your change - “

Tess snatches it quickly off the counter, and in doing so, touches her hand. It’s nothing like Devi’s. It’s warm, and dark, and broad.

She hasn’t touched anything real in so long.

And she snatches her cigarettes off the counter and runs for the door.

~~

This is what he was afraid of, that coward, that filthy coward, he did this to her, _he did this to her,_ he’s the reason she can’t feel those cold, thin hands on her skin, she’ll kill him she’ll kill him she’ll kill him

~~

In the light of the morning glow _just you and me and this house_ sweating and shaking but very much _just you and me and this house_ through the window onto her face when she looks to her left, she sees _just you and me and this house_ she might have dreamed the whole thing up with his _just you and me and this house_ believe it about this place _just you and me and this house_ hole through his skull just like there was when she first made it back to the ground and a puddle of blood around him _just you and me and this house_ a black halo in the ruddy goop is his hair, shaken from his baring scalp like _just you and me and this house_

She runs She runs She runs She runs

~~

the walls were wet with blood that room was filled with people it was filled with people they were all screaming all screaming all screaming how long was she down there why didnt he ever torture her was he just playing with her just seeing what he could get

 

 

how did she fall for it, why does she always fall for the shittiest guys

dillion dillion hahahahaha

 

 

 

where are the stars

 

its so dark down here waiting in the dark just waiting for footsteps on the stairs

 

 

 

He took her glasses off her face and stepped on them. She left them in that house. Her broken glasses. Her hands are covered in blood.

 

 

_STOP IT STOP IT LET ME OUT THIS IS MY BODY TOO YOU FUCK LET ME OUT LET ME OUT_ what day is it what day is it january january january how long have i been out here _YOU BITCH LET ME OUT ILL KILL YOU ILL KILL YOU_

 

_did appear while these visions did appear if we shadows_

I saw her. I saw her. She was radiantly beautiful and I saw her. I showed her my body and she fucking loved it, you piece of shit, do you know what her tongue felt like inside me?

~~

And then, apropos of nothing, she sees Him.

He’s not doing anything. Just sitting at a table outside, drinking a cherry sucky. Everything about Him is exactly the same as she remembered, without those ugly distortions her fairies built around themselves to appeal to her - His boots are shorter, His hair mostly gone and outlandishly styled like a set of antennae.

He’s real. Really real.

And He’s enjoying His life.

“You,” she says, and sits down across from Him. He looks up at her, wide-eyed, and makes that weird slurping noise with his straw.

“Oh,” He says, “you’re alive. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“You son of a bitch, you ruined my life.”

“Oh. I do apologize about that.” He frowns. “You _did_ seem like a nice person - I like your eyeliner.”

“What the _fuck_ is your problem?” She snaps, and stabs a knife into the wooden tabletop. He startles back, staring wide-eyed at the blade. “You ruined my fucking life - you ruined my fucking life, and you have the gall to sit here and relax in broad fucking daylight? You putrid tumor on God’s ass, do you have any fucking idea what you did to me?”

“I sense that you’re upset,” He says, and reaches for the knife in the table, “which is too bad, really, since I missed our little tete-a-tetes, but - “

She stabs Him through the hand with her little pocketknife, and He screams, surprised, as she pins Him to the wood.

“Now you listen to me, _Johnny-but-you-can-call-me-Nny,_ ” she hisses in His face as the noise of his agony subsides into whimpers and she grabs Him by the collar, “I don’t know if you’re real, or if my hallucinations are just getting better at tricking me, but either way, I’m going to wipe you off the face of the earth as quickly as possible. It’s going to be easy. Like smashing a cockroach with one finger - remember that?”

“I thought - “ He coughs and jerks, His pinned hand ripping around the blade but unable to move, “I thought you were dead - “

“I am. The dead are not quiet in Hill House, Nny.”

“ _The Haunting_?”

“What?”

“You’re quoting _The Haunting_?”

“Yeah, why not,” she says, and reaches back for the butterfly knife hanging from her belt - then screams as something pierces her gut, low above the hip. In His hand, the weapon she - _IDIOT! IDIOT! IDIOT! THIS IS MY BODY TOO, YOU BITCH_ \- left on the damn table is plunging into her body.

She stumbles back - He grabs the handle of her little knife and wrenches it from His flesh as she stares helplessly, hands scrambling at her small arsenal and finding herself desperately wanting. “Well, _Nell,_ ” He spits, “maybe it’s been too long for you to remember, but I’m actually _pretty good_ at this. I did it for a long time, you know.”

_fuck fuck fuck where’s that fucking taser -_

“Although, I _will_ give you points for actually getting a hit off on me,” He continues lazily, watching with the detached amusement of a winning poker hand as Tess struggles to flip her cheap POS blade open, “fast thinking. Good move on your part. Shit! This really fucking hurts. You really got me on this one.”

She stumbles forward, swings at Him clumsily, and He laughs - something strikes the side of her head, and she falls, gasping, white noise crawling into her brain from every side, blood like fire, skin loose and not her own, she is a brain piloting a body piloting a soul and none of it is hers, she is a doppleganger in her own body - 

“Now, don’t wilt like that - you’re in pretty STAB-le condition! Haha! Heh heh…I am funny,” He says from somewhere far away. Then, after a moment, “what, don’t _you_ think it’s funny? See, I said STAB-le instead of stable - it’s like stable, but I emphasized the stabbing bit, since I stabbed you - come on, it’s a _little_ funny.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Tess says, and reaches for her ankh. He’s going to kill her, like He should have all those weeksmonthsyearscantremember ago. And just like then, her fear paralyzes her. Her legs are water. She cannot run.

_YOU BITCH THIS IS MY BODY TOO, GET THE FUCK UP AND RUN, RUN, THAT’S WHAT YOU DID BEFORE YOU FUCKING COWARD, YOU LITTLE SHIT, I’M NOT READY YET LET ME OUT LET ME OUT_

Something taps against the ground in front of her, and she looks up, almost startled, to see a long, silvery blade hanging from his hand, point bouncing on the ground. The Thing That Was Devi won’t stop screaming, but she can hear that tapping clear as a bell, cutting through it. “Is that…a katana?”

“It’s pretty neat, right? I’m going to disembowel you with it.”

A smile twitches at her lips - the blood is gushing out of her abdomen, but the pain is distant, too far away to hurt her right now. “What are you, a weeb?”

“Hey now,” He says, and when she looks up into His face, He’s frowning, “Japanimation has come a long way. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a new art style. It’s 2002, you know. Year of the Monkey.”

“It’s ’98,” Tess says, squinting up at Him. He frowns harder.

“Oh, Tess,” He says, “it most emphatically is _not._ ”

He raises the blade - then, as if self-conscious, lowers it again and drops it on the ground. “Poor dear. You really are quite mad, aren’t you - madder than me - pitiful thing. Can you hear them screaming?”

“Hurry up and fucking kill me,” she says, “it’s so hot, I can’t take it, I can’t take it - I hate this fucking place, I hate this fucking house, I want out - “

“Fuck, you - “

She snatches the blade up off the ground. “It’s just you and me and this house, Nny,” she says, “remember that? Remember that? Was that even you?”

“Holy shit,” He says, and laughs, hoarse and barking. Backs away as she stumbles to her feet, clutching at her wound, pointing the end of the sword towards Him. “You’ve outdone me! Here I was, thinking I’d reached the top, but you - you’re a master! You’ve taken it to a new level! I applaud you - no, really! I do! This is artistry in motion.” He throws His arms out, gesturing wildly, filling up more space than He ever deserved to keep. “Tell you what, Tess. You compel me! So go ahead. Give me your best shot. Let’s see what you can do with that thing.”

She looks into His eyes, white and bulbous and frothing mad, and back down at the blade.

He’s stronger than her. Well, fuck, no, not with those scrawny little arms - He’s _more adept_ than her. If she strikes at Him, she’s lost.

He thinks they’re playing a game. That wide grin, those waiting eyes - they’re playing a game, and He knows how to win. She has no idea how - no idea what the rules are. And she’s not going to play.

She plunges the blade into her stomach and falls on her side.

 

“Well, fuck.”

 

 

“What a day, huh?” He prods at her shoulder with a toe. “Guess I should clean up. Get ready for tomorrow. Poor child.” He kneels by her body and grabs the katana by the hilt. “Well, no use wasting a piece of art. It’s a shame. You could have been great, you know. Very thoughtful, good taste in movies. _The Haunting_? Perfect choice, better than _Kafka_ or _The Fly_. Really made my artistic quoting decisions look like a used bag of disposable beans. It was based on a book, you know, about - “

Her arm jerks up and shoves the ankh through his eye.

~~

The phone rings right when Devi gets out of the shower. She curses loudly, knots her towel just under her armpits, and picks up. Her wet hair soaks the plastic. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” says an unfamiliar woman’s voice, “he’s dead. I’m coming back.”

“What? Who - I think you have the wrong number,” she says. That, or it’s a tasteless crank call, but the woman on the other side of the line sounds like an adult, so that seems unlikely.

There’s a long pause. “No, that’s not - Devi? Isn’t that you?”

Her blood freezes in her veins. “Who are you?” She snaps, no longer interested in fucking around. Her number isn’t in any phone books or online registries - she’s always been very certain of that. “How did you get this number?”

“You gave it to me - “

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Another pause. “Don’t you remember - don’t you know who I am? Don’t you - “

Silence.

“God,” the woman’s voice says, shaking, inflection growing desperate, “god! Did I dream you? Am I awake? Am I even alive?” An agonized sound, gasping. “Are you real? Are you real?”

The line goes dead.

FIN.


End file.
